What She Was Looking For
by LilacSky128
Summary: Martha Jones has been in love - properly - three times in her life.


She's been in love - properly - three times in her life.

The first was with the doctor. And that was exciting, thrilling, exhilarating… and impossible. She supposes there was a part of her that always knew that. She remembers that when she first met him, she used to think that she could make him love her. But that was before she realised just how much he was hurting from the loss of Rose, just how much he only saw her as a friend, a companion. To her, he would always be so much more than that.

She wonders if he didn't know, all that time, in some far-back recess of his mind how she felt about him. As she looks back on those times, she sometimes thinks she was being about as subtle as a sledgehammer. After all, she even told him. Of course, it was when he was human so she hadn't thought he'd remember. He never mentioned it again.

She's pretty sure he just wanted to ignore it.

Which means, she thinks with a small smile, that he must have wanted to keep her around. Only as a friend though.

She doesn't mind though. He showed her time and space and the universe and she wouldn't change it for a second, no matter how difficult, how painful parts of it might have been.

Her love for the doctor is a memory now, which was confirmed when she saw him again. It was awkward at first. Especially when she'd learnt that he'd told Donna about her.

Sometimes she really wishes that the doctor could - for once in his life - keep his mouth shut.

The thing was that the very person who diffused the awkwardness was the very person who she'd have thought would have inspired it. The doctor's new companion: Donna. There she was, with a wry crack at the doctor here and a comment or two so it was out in the open, not the elephant in the corner. And when she said that she was definitely getting over him, Martha thought, with a jolt, that, no, she wasn't. She wasn't getting over him at all. She was over him. Well and truly clear of it.

Of course, she'd moved on by then anyway, but it was a relief to finally have closure.

The second person she fell in love with was Tom…

They'd met - almost by accident - at a medical conference. She recognised him immediately from the year that never was. And she had smiled slightly when she noticed him looking at her.

They'd started talking, and - although it sounds so cliché to say it - one thing really did lead to another. It happened so quickly.

Too quickly, she supposes now.

She loved him, but there were so many things that she wasn't able to tell him. She couldn't even tell him about where they had really first met. Eventually, the amount of things they couldn't talk about grew to be much more than the amount of things they could.

When she told him it was over, he smiled a little sadly and told her that he'd thought it might be.

"I don't know what it is Martha," he'd said, shaking his head. "But something isn't right."

She smiled back. So many things weren't right. Too many things. "I guess so."

He'd shaken his head. "I hope you find what you're looking for, Martha."

She smiled at him. He was so kind. Too kind. "I hope you do too," she'd said. "I really do." she'd pressed her engagement ring into his hand, kissed him on the cheek, and moved out.

And the third… Well, she hasn't quite worked out how that happened yet.

All she knows is that after she walked away from the tardis for what she really thought might just be the final time, Mickey Smith ran up behind her and Jack and flung his arms round both of them. And then, their lives just seemed just seemed to fold seamlessly into one another's. They were friends, she supposes, at first. They had so many things in common, so much it surprised her. Some of them were sad things, like unrequited love and playing second best, and some were happier, like their love for adventure or the fact that they both wanted to help people, with or without the doctor.

So it was that when she broke up with Tom, she started to spend more and more time with Mickey Smith. Jack had kind of disappeared off the map - literally - by then, both of them knowing vaguely what it had to do with and why they couldn't and maybe shouldn't try and contact him.

They met at the same bar every week. She could tell him everything. And he believed it all. Even about the year that never was. And so they sat at that bar, talking and laughing, understanding each other.

Mickey had gone independent in his defending the earth, as he put it, and she was working as a doctor for the moment, not quite knowing what to do with herself. And, in the end, it was Mickey who helped her find her direction.

He convinced her to go independent - with him. And they became partners. Only in work, of course.

And she enjoyed his company, she really did, and she hadn't laughed like that with someone for a long time. They played off each other well, they worked together well, and what's more she enjoyed every second of it.

They just seemed to fit together.

When he'd kissed her for the first time, she'd been - at first - surprised. She'd not really been thinking of him in that way. But it felt right.

Her first love was tainted with sadness.

Her second was tainted with silence.

But she looks at Mickey, and wonders what she's been doing wrong this whole time, because it's easy.

Or maybe, she smiles to herself, she's just got third time lucky.

She's found what she was looking for.


End file.
